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An interview with Angela Prentner-Smith
Dyspraxia is a condition that affects around 10% of the British population, yet it’s still generally misunderstood. To mark Dyspraxia Week, we asked our founder and MD Angela Prentner-Smith a few questions about Dyspraxia, her diagnosis, and how it affects her life and work.
When did you first notice you had Dyspraxic traits? As a child, I was labelled as clumsy. I was the kid that cried in gym class because I found it so hard. My nan used to say I was covered in bruises. Dyspraxia affects your gross motor skills, and your fine motor skills. Gross motor skills are things like running or playing ball. Fine motor skills are things like handwriting. So along with my general clumsiness, I also found handwriting incredibly difficult. Although I could read before I started school, my handwriting was about two years behind everybody else's. My handwriting is still not good. However, during my school years, nothing was picked up. I don’t think Dyspraxia was even a consideration when I was at school. Even now, how many parents would recognise Dyspraxia in their children? Raising awareness about the condition is a priority. Does Dyspraxia just affect your coordination? Dyspraxia is also known as ‘Developmental Coordination Disorder’, but I don’t think that term covers all aspects of Dyspraxia. Working memory is also one of the things that affect people with Dyspraxia, and I think that has even more of an impact in the workplace and at school than the coordination issues. The ability to retain sequences of movements and sequences of words is also harder for people with Dyspraxia. Another thing - and I've only just learned this - is that people with Dyspraxia are emotionally sensitive. This makes complete sense to me now. When I was at school I was very sensitive and I used to get very upset about things. I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. It doesn't help when you're also struggling to focus and to do some of the things that your peers find easy like running, P.E and playing games like hopscotch. On the plus side, that sensitivity as a child turns into empathy as an adult, so it's not necessarily a bad thing. How has it affected your working life? Distinguishing from left and right and understanding the physical arrangement of things is a big challenge for me. This has been particularly difficult and stressful in the workplace. New space setups, big conferences, and big away days are hard because my brain is working extra hard to understand where things are in space. I have to put so much effort into not bumping into people! And just the level of sensory overload that comes with being in a space with a lot of people can be really exhausting. It takes me weeks to get the layout of a new office building as I can’t remember which way is which. Not knowing where I am can be quite panic-inducing. One of the hardest things that I remember in my working life was an away day. It was meant to be fun, but for me, it was incredibly stressful. I was in a strange environment with 200/300 strangers, so I already had social anxiety. Then the activities involved listening, which if you have working memory issues is exhausting and difficult. To top it off we were put into groups and assessed on our drumming and dancing skills! I was literally the weakest link. I felt like this little girl that wanted to crumble again. But what can you do? Who wants to say that to their employer that they're not going to take part because they find drumming and dancing and being with groups of people really stressful? Is there anything employers can do to make it easier? It’s a tricky one, and I don’t have all the answers, because part of me thinks, well why should others miss out on what they want to do because of me? However, a bit of compassion and an understanding that the things that they think are easy and shouldn’t be a problem can be for others. Asking questions is also really important, don’t just assume that everything will be alright for everyone. We’re lucky at This is Milk that we have a culture of bringing our whole selves to work. Around half of our team has been diagnosed as neurodivergent, which is quite high for the size of us. And I'm quite proud that we have people in their 40s talking for the first time about the struggles that they've had in their lives and how their brains work differently. Dyspraxia also makes workplace learning harder. For example, being in a group of people, showing up to a workshop, having to sit and take in the information in certain ways, handwriting and taking notes is difficult. Then there are the working memory issues that come with Dyspraxia and other conditions like Dyslexia. Learning should be for everyone, and we need to focus on removing those barriers. At This is Milk we feel so strongly about this that last year we started developing an inclusive platform called Neve. Neve adapts learning pathways to the uniqueness of your brain. For example, one of the many things it could do for someone with working memory issues is delivering information in bite-sized chunks, so that that the information is easier to retain. Tell us about your diagnosis When I was in my late 20s, a colleague told me that she had Dyspraxia. Out of interest, I looked it up on Wikipedia and I went through it thinking: “Oh my god, everything on that is me, everything that is all me”. Fortunately, at the time, I was doing a master's degree in design innovation at the Glasgow School of Art and their additional support needs unit arranged for me to see an educational psychologist. Part of the diagnostic assessment was the Wechsler Intelligence Scale and what they’re looking for is a spiky profile - when you’re really high for one thing and really low for another. Someone who’s not neurodivergent would have a more or less bumpy wave, however, those who have conditions such as Dyspraxia or Dyslexia tend to have really big spikes. For example, my verbal comprehension was up in the high percentile – which means if you have 100 people all my age, my verbal comprehension was in the top 10%. However, my processing speed was in the first centile at the bottom of it. How important was that diagnosis for you? There is a view that a diagnosis doesn't matter. That labels don't matter, but I think they do because they help you understand yourself. They allow you to feel okay about being in the world as you, rather than thinking you're just bad at stuff. These aren't curable conditions, and who even want to ‘cure’ them? It’s part of who we are. I think that's an important way to look at it. Do you think Dyspraxia makes you stronger in some areas? Strategic insights, empathy, episodic memory, tenacity, and being a really hard worker are all Dyspraxic traits. I frequently get told I have a brain like a trap. I remember what document we've put things in, and exactly when we did something. I can pretty much remember the content of a whole meeting. There are no flies on me for that! Yet, on the other hand, my working memory can't remember whether my left or my right tap is hot or cold I wish I had known there were particular strengths of Dyspraxia when I was diagnosed because I probably would have felt better about it. The language used around Dyspraxia, and other neurodivergent conditions can be so negative. They really focus on the problems. Why can't we just change the language on this? It’s time we started talking about the strengths instead. You can find out more about Dyspraxia at The Dyspraxia Organisation and if you’d like to be kept up to date with our new learning platform, Neve, please enter your details in this form, and we'll be in touch.
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 The mistakes I made - and the lessons I learned - when I started This is Milk
Being in a position to reflect on 7 years of building This is Milk, has been a humbling experience. I’m thankful for being able to make the decisions I have in life, and as a result made the learnings I have. As they say, you learn by doing. When you’re building a business – your focus is always, at least in part, on looking successful, so although you experience much hardship as you grow, it’s not always appropriate to share your failings and therefore your learnings. Today, I feel comfortable in sharing what I learned in those first few years, and in another 7, I’ll be sharing what I’m learning today! Be your own salesperson In the early days I had the courage and bravery to start a business, but I lacked the confidence to make sales and pursue the business I needed to. I looked to others to do this for me. But when you first start a business, you need to be the salesperson, you need to have enough confidence to do that yourself. Get on top of your cash flow Cashflow is the killer of small business and in the first few years, I don't believe any small business will not have cashflow problems. I personally feel cashflow problems as like a physical pain. It makes me want to vomit, I feel stressed, I can't sleep. It's awful. It completely distracts you from delivering and making the right business decisions. So, getting on top of your cashflow, and really understanding where the money comes from in your business, is one of the first things that you have to learn. Rather than getting distracted by brand, and marketing and team development, you just need to understand where your cash is coming from really, really quickly. (And don’t underestimate the value of developing your company’s credit – credit cards, and overdrafts aren’t easy to get until you have trading history, so view your ability to get credit as an achievement). Don’t rush to employ staff Employing full-time staff was a pressure that as an early-stage business owner I found really derailing. There is a lot of overhead with employing staff, both from a finance perspective, a time perspective, and the pain if it doesn't go right. A lot of the push that you get is to employ staff early, because it looks good. But in those early days, what was more important to my business, was close associates that can help you deliver and being confident in your model. Getting used to delivering a lot with a little human capital is key! Trust your gut I once believed that nothing bad could come with a cup of coffee with someone. Yes, it can! I also thought I should pursue every opportunity, even when my gut told me it wasn't the right one. I should have trusted my gut, as I knew something wasn't sitting right, even if I couldn't entirely articulate what it was. Learning to trust your gut instinct and to be confident to walk away is so important. I think as we learn more about our brains, we will really start to understand that intuition, is really knowledge. Eat that frog Have the difficult conversations. Specifically, for me, these were with team members, and I would lie awake at night, losing precious sleep over issues and unsaid things. I should have just had the conservation and been upfront about my expectations. I wanted to be nice, and be seen as a different kind of boss, and as a result I let things fester. Don’t be like me, just eat that frog straight away. It’s never as bad as you think it will be and you’ll be respected and be able to deal with issues in a better way. Be you In business there’s a patriarchal tendency towards ownership, to look big, and to have the swanky office. This leads to people feeling like that’s what they need to do to compete. But that’s not the kind of business I wanted to run. It sat so incongruently with my values. Once I made the decision to embrace being small, it turned out we were able to land good clients because we were being authentic, and we were delivering better work. Walking away and saying that is not what I want to become was a very important thing for me to do. And finally, ignore the naysayers! When you first start out, there’s so much negativity, everybody's giving you advice. It's really hard to navigate this advice. Some of it is well meaning, some of it isn't though, some of it is just: “Who do you think you are to be doing this?”. Ignore the people with tall poppy syndrome! Forge your own path, make your own learnings, and know there are others out there that do mean well. Find your community, this will help you on the bad days and celebrate the good days. 
In today's 3@3, our Inclusion and Engagement consultant Lynn Pilkington talks to UX Designer Morgane Tanguy about all things digital accessibility.
In the video interview, Lynn asks Morgane: Why is digital accessibility important? Who benefits from digital accessibility? And how do we make things more digital accessible? If you're interested in learning more about digital accessibility, Lynn and Morgane will be facilitating our 1-day course (split over 2 mornings) on the 2nd and 3rd of November. You can find more about that here or send us an email if you'd like to find out more. If you're looking for the web accessibility standards Morgane mentions in the video, you can find them here. We hope you enjoy our latest 3@3, and if you'd like to connect with Lynn and Morgane, click on their names to go to their Linkedin profiles.  By Tremis Skeete Building products than resonate with many customers are not built in a vacuum. We want to build products customers love, and that sometimes requires connecting with what real people care about and understanding from their perspective what problems are worth solving.
How do we connect with these customers in order to understand them? This is where identifying customer types can be useful in focusing research activities. Here is one way you can identify three customer types. There are essentially three types of customers that use your software product: 1. The cold customers: They historically have not expressed a deep interest in using the product, and if they do, they rarely use it. 2. The casual customers: They use it more than cold customers, but they are not “in love with the product” so it is not a habit or part of their lifestyle for them to use it. 3. The core customers: The customers who found a way to connect with the product. They personally discovered how it could improve their lives, they love your product, and they do not want to visualise their lives without it. It's only natural to focus on your core customers, because they have valuable experiences and stories that led them to being loyal to your product. That’s why capturing those stories can be valuable for developing other services and launching marketing initiatives. Core customers are the ones really using your product and can provide invaluable insights. Regarding the cold and casual users, one can work to examine their respective user journeys and the thoughts and feelings they associate with it. To accomplish this, strive to do the following: 1. Understand the actions they take in your product 2. Understand what they think and feel as they take those actions, and 3. Don’t forget to ask why. As a digital designer, remember that your customer's perception of the product matters more than yours - so as you dive deeper into customer data, don’t forget to explore how the perceptions they share can evolve your design process. In time and with enough practice, being mindful of these three types of customers can help you gain valuable knowledge to improve conversion and retention rates, and increase your digital product lifespan. Tremis Skeete is a Product Manager at This is Milk. Click on his name to go to his Linkedin profile or email him to chat more about product management.  By Joe Triccas
*This blog post takes inspiration from my old colleague's blog post. “All of us have a finite amount of effort, and a finite time to spend it in.” The above quote from the referenced post really resonated with me and gave me an insight into something that was missing from my expectations of myself and those around me. It is easy to measure time and assess how much stuff you got done in that time. What is difficult is understanding the level of effort you expended in that time. We live in an ever-changing culture, with mantras like “Be Kind” being in the common lexicon, it really took me by surprise just how unkind I could be to myself when assessing my ‘productivity.’ It also highlighted that, in a mostly subconscious manner, I was letting this slip over into my assessments of others. The crux of this challenge, to me, is that whilst we all operate to the same clock, we all have different pools of effort available to us. This effort pool is not only drained by work. Everything in life takes a draw on it. Personal hygiene, home maintenance, children, maintaining relationships, personal development, work; it is all of these that are taking some of your effort every single day. Are we all just machines? My mind loves an analogy, and the running race analogy fits the bill quite nicely here. We all have a different ability to run a 100m. Some of us can cover the distance in say 15 seconds, using less effort. In this context, it is quite easy to see how the amount of effort expended can be different from person to person, even if they are all running the same distance in the same amount of time. Riding out the muse As with any art form, inspiration can take hold, time measurements can fade away and effort can seem infinite. I have encountered many developers in my years, who can find such a deep passion for crafting code, that they can very easily find themselves working into the early hours of the morning. To more traditional creative endeavours, this is known as riding out the muse. You never know if you are going to have a period of lesser enthusiasm, where you are less productive, or patently blocked, so you must “make hay whilst the sun shines”. Conclusion Each person is unique, with a cacophony of pulls on their time and effort. Some people may be able to run 100 meters in 15 seconds expending truly little effort, for others this may exhaust them before they hit the finish line. It falls on each of us to understand our limitations, work on communicating those to our colleagues and loved ones, and ensure that, where we are unable to sustain levels of effort, we have built around us a support network to aid others. Likewise, it falls on each of us to be open to each persons’ differences, not hold them to our own internal standard (in terms of effort expenditure) Joe is a System Tester at This is Milk. You can email him here, or click on his name to go to his Linkedin profile.
This week, User Researcher and Designer, Bobby King talks to Tremis Skeete about sketch noting. Tremis asks him:
If you have any suggestions for future Three at Threes, or would like to take part in one, we'd love to hear from you -email us.  By Tremis Skeete Lynn Pilkington is a self-described ‘accidental COVID entrepreneur’, looking at different ways of working and how to bring the most out of people using accessible working environments. This focus has been on fast-forward since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Previously training to be a therapist, Lynn is acutely aware of how everyone’s brain works differently. She has been passionate about developing workplace inclusion and diversity for years. But the onset of the pandemic has brought many of the issues she’s been working on into sharp focus. Learning remotely and digitally showed her exactly how inadequate some of the processes and models are in today’s world, where sending a link simply isn’t enough. Taking inspiration from her background in community engagement, digital learning, accessibility, and equality & diversity, along with her own wavy and winding career and learning journey, she is now focused on creating productive ways to bring out the best in people in a new world of work. “The pandemic has offered an opportunity to approach work differently - to ‘Build Back Better’ with new methods, rather than sticking to the way things have been done in the past,” Lynn says. “Mainstream working processes don’t cater for everyone, and while this has been a growing issue for many years, the pandemic has highlighted the flaws of the traditional workplace.” Despite the trauma and tragedy of the past year, the pandemic has offered some silver linings. One of which is the ability to step away from the 9-5, desk-based, presenteeism model of working, and move towards one based on outcomes. This new way of working focuses on individual needs, embracing asynchronous working to get the best out of people. Lynn explains further: “Reasonable adjustments made for diversity reasons should not just be seen as add-ons that allow certain people to work. They are good business practices that can have a positive impact on the entire business.” Changing the way we work to be more flexible, inclusive, and diverse allows people to work around family, life, and individual requirements. It allows companies to hire from around the world, taking advantage of a larger talent pool, and making the most of their staff’s abilities and skills. Lynn admits that the challenge to transform mainstream workspaces is a somewhat messy landscape. “To have a diverse working environment you need to allow for diverse personalities and working requirements,” Lynn says. “But inclusive working, starting with what each individual needs and what works best for them, brings out the best in people.” There are plenty of organizations dedicated to inclusion and diversity at the moment. But the focus tends to be narrow, looking at individual characteristics rather than taking a holistic approach. What Lynn does is bring everything together, looking at the bigger picture to create a fully inclusive workplace that works and adapts for everyone. She will be working with This is Milk to support workplaces and learning environments to bring this to life. With all the changes that the pandemic has brought, organizations can’t afford not to do it. As terrifying as it may seem and as big a job as it will be, Lynn feels that transforming how organizations work is too important to ignore. If you'd like to talk to Lynn about creating a fully inclusive workplace, email her or click on her name to connect with her on Linkedin. You can find her on instagram and twitter @lynnpilk
Welcome our latest Three at Three. In this week's episode, Angela Prentner-Smith chats to Tesco Bank's Process Improvement and Development Lead Ann Marie Dockerill, about Process Modelling. Angela asks Ann Marie the following three questions:
Why is good process design imperative for business? What do you think the key steps to good process design are? Can iterative process mapping be applied in an agile environment? We hope you enjoy it, and if you'd like to find out more about Ann Marie, click on her name to go to her Linkedin profile. If you'd like to request a topic for future Three at Three, or get involved in one, we'd love to hear from you. Please email your suggestions to: hello@thisismilk.co.uk
Welcome to our Pride Month special of Three at Three. In this episode, our Engagement and Inclusion expert Lynn Pilkington interviews Mental Health First Aid Trainer and consultant, Davey Shields.
Davey is an independent Mental Health First Aid Trainer and consultant. He is also the founder of the charity MenTalkHealth which was set up to tell stories around mental health to encourage men and others to talk more. |
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